Word: raisa
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...diligence can sometimes be charming. During a visit to Czechoslovakia in 1987, Raisa kept behind Mikhail and conscientiously repeated, "Thank you so much for coming," as they worked the crowd. In Prague she noticed that the General Secretary was about to overlook a young boy. "Mikhail Sergeyevich," she said in her high-pitched voice. Her husband turned around, greeted the child and invited him to Moscow. Her thoroughness can be irritating too. At a State Department lunch in Washington, Raisa upset Secretary of State George Shultz by having a brief conversation with each of the 180 people on the receiving...
...such idiosyncrasies are generally overlooked in the West, her audience at home is more critical. Asked to give their opinion of Raisa Gorbachev, some Soviets roll their eyes and choose their words carefully. "I'm with her because I think women should take a more active role in our society," says a young woman named Anna in Moscow. "But she must use more common sense. She goes to a factory wearing furs. That's bad taste. She's showing off, and it doesn't help her husband's public image...
...country where husbands usually have the last word on everything, the Gorbachevs appear to enjoy an unusually equal partnership. "I'm very lucky with Mikhail," Raisa confided to a dinner companion during her 1985 trip to Paris. "We are really friends -- or, if you prefer, we have a great rapport." Mikhail seems to enjoy his wife's feistiness. After his British publisher asked him last April about the possibility of Raisa's writing a book, the General Secretary smiled and said, "My wife is a very independent lady. On this occasion, I will act as a messenger boy. She will...
...Which Raisa will appear at the summit, the vivacious woman who chats up Western reporters abroad or the more modest one who stays in the background on her husband's tours of Soviet factories and collective farms? At a time when Gorbachev's reform efforts are still facing opposition from hard-liners, obstructionist bureaucrats and skeptical workers, the General Secretary is likely to tread softly. But he has not given up on pushing his wife forward, perhaps to demonstrate in the most personal terms that he is intent on improving the lot of women. Since 1987, for example...
...spite of her academic achievements, many of Raisa's fellow citizens perceive her as having risen to prominence not so much through merit as through marriage, something of a throwback in an egalitarian society like the Soviet Union. "Raisa Maximovna ought to be more modest," says a young village woman. "If we knew she was a help to her husband on these trips and didn't just go along to enjoy herself, our whole impression of her would be different." Adds Luda Yevsukova, a Soviet emigre in Washington: "She's a normal woman who married well. She gets nice clothes...